Blizzard is "looking at free to play as an option for the multiplayer" in StarCraft II, reports StarcraftN, quoting lead designer Dustin Browder during a panel discussion at the Valencia eSports Congress. He also notes that the nature of their RTS sequel may not make this worthwhile. "We donít know how we would monetize it," he adds. "While it might be good fun for me to play against someone with only half the units available to them, thatís not going to be an enjoyable experience for them." Thanks Eurogamer.

TheEmissary wrote on Sep 21, 2012, 21:24:As far as people bitching about them worrying about how they would monetize it, what the fuck do you expect? No one would do F2P if they couldn't make money off of it. Even Valve makes boatloads of cash off of their F2P model. If you're expecting developers to just hand you shit with no way for them to make money, you're either stupid or naive. Seriously, your complaints aren't even making sense anymore, just go fuck yourselves.

NO U

They are taking an existing product and screwing it up. I don't play SC2, and wouldn't if they paid me, but I know when something is Fd in the A zone. With successful F2P schemes, a game is either built from the ground up to be playable as an a la carte experience, or the parts you buy are things that don't change the core gameplay. If they wanted to sell maps on a microtransaction basis, that'd be fine. Even small efficiency tweaks would be a sensible way of doing this, because people just go apeshit for advancement mechanics of any kind, and the existing competitive scene could continue to exist at the end of that silly little metagame.

Their best idea, which they admit is stupid, is "give people a broken version of our game."

That's not even how you make a good demo, in the traditional scheme. It makes even less sense in the new model. It is full retard, and even talking about it shows that they're putting zero thought or effort into this.

Having a F2P game that is actually just a portion of your hard drive that says "buy the real thing and this won't suck anymore" is not magnanimous. They sold their game to just about everyone who actually wants it. They got paid. If they want to convert less interested people into sales, this crap is not how to do it.